Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Conventional electronic payment processing systems provide a deficient framework for fashioning an improved rewards system to serve the interests of multiple disparate merchants. Transaction-based rewards programs for modifying human behavior are commonly operated by payment processors having a vested interest in certain payment card brands, account enrollments, devices, reward types, and methods beneficial to themselves. Deficiencies of this arrangement sharply limit merchants' marketing opportunities and the size of the eligible consumer market.
Deficiencies of such systems include: (i) current dependence among disparate merchants on a handful of payment processor firms which dominate multi-merchant rewards systems; (ii) among those payment processor firms, conflicting interests with merchants often arising from self-serving rewards program rules; (iii) promotion of loyalty principally to the payment processor/card brand; (iv) mandatory account enrollment by a consumer with a particular processor/issuer brand; (v) unappealing rewards such as 2% cash back, points, and airline miles, the rewards merely issued as a credit to the mandatory account; (vi) payment processor control of transaction data; (vii) “vendor lock-in” wherein each payment processor's proprietary security methods govern mandatory compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (hereafter “PCI DSS,” also regulated by some of the same firms); (viii) intrusive behavior tracking practices unwanted by many consumers; (ix) inadequate organizing of groups of disparate merchants and of rewards programs, (x) significant processor costs, (xi) minimally effective methods to induce desired visiting and spending behaviors at the enrolled merchants, the methods instead favoring the payment processor.